The document provides a market plan for TheStudentZone.net, a proposed website created by UTD students for UTD students. The website will feature forums, classifieds, professor ratings, and a student expo page to allow students to share advice, experiences, and information. The plan outlines the company description, strategic focus, situational analysis including target markets and competitors, and a product pitch. The key challenges are attracting and maintaining active users, becoming self-sustaining, and outcompeting other student resources like Facebook and RateMyProfessor. The target market is primarily current UTD students and alumni.

1. UTD TheStudentZone.net Market Plan
Team 9
David Golynskiy
Georgia Gottsacker
Ricky Calderon
Elin Briton
MKT3300
Professor Strijnev
5/5/2013

2. 1|Page
1. Executive Summary
TheStudentZone.net is a website created by current UTD students for the purpose
of becoming a cooperative online community and a useful tool for all past, present,
and future students. The website will feature forums, classified advertisements,
professor/class ratings, and a student expo page. This will allow students to share
advice and experiences, network, organize, discuss, buy/sell/trade, and be creative by
adding their own features to the website. Students would be able to suggest features or
expose them in the student expo page. There are many talents hidden within our
student body and there are is also a need for studentsseeking advice/info from others
on campus. Not everyone has a bunch of friends on campus and not all friends may
have the answers you need. Therefore, an online community made by the students, for
the students can be an invaluable tool.
Though these features may sound great to most students, the hardest part of getting
this website to work is to attract and maintain active users. The problem is that our
website provides a template for people to use, but it is up to the people to actually
start using it. At the beginning, the website will be empty and usage may be scarce.
We must create incentives for users and focus on improving students’ lives in order to
be sustainable. However, if we can manage this, the beauty of running a community
like this is that eventually it will become self-sustainable.
TheStudentZone.net can be financially rewarding too. Ads can generate passive
income with heavy online traffic. There are a few other ways to generate income:
from donations, listing prices, memberships, lottery, challenges, etc. Capturing the
college market can create opportunities for marketing contracts in the future. If the
website expands to other campuses this can become very profitable.

3. 2|Page
2. Company Description
As a senior at UTD, David Golynskiy observed that a web community with
freedom to exchange info would be very beneficial for all students and his fellow
classmates confirmed these thoughts. After many positive responses, he decided to
create TheStudenZone.net in August of 2012.
The website has a big potential as it is run by students. This allows them total
freedom from official UTD rules and freedom of expression. Nevertheless, certain
ethical standards such as a no tolerance policy for cheating or academic dishonesty
will still apply. The open source style of this website can allow students to expose
their creativity and be noticed amongst other UTD students. In fact, one student has
created a java application that optimizes schedules when choosing different classes.
This saves a great deal of time. Other innovations like this can be posted onto the
website and be accessed by anyone for free!
The short-term goal for the site is to become self-sustained in terms of
maintenance costs and usage. The long term plan for TheStudenZone.net is to expand
nationwide. This site has the potential to capture the student market as well as become
an invaluable tool for all. The upcoming generation has the ability to create and share
their experiences/ideas unlike ever before. If the site functions as envisioned, amazing
outcomes can come about.
3. Strategic Focus/Plan
Mission Statement:
The aim of TheStudentZone.net is to become a useful resource for past,
current and future students of UTD to exchange advice, ideas, and experiences.
Accessibility to our site is of utmost importance tous, therefore in the near future we
will focus on keeping membership free and make as little obligation as possible for
our users.

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Goals:
1. To become a widely used and valuable resource for students
2. To effectively market, attract, and sustain actI've users.
3. Keep website free and allow full freedom of expression.
4. Maintain a degree of integrity and ethical standard.
5. To expand and capture the student market for profitability.
6. Outcompete the competion by providing a more personal and communal
setting.
Financial Goals
1. The website must become self-sustainable and cover its own maintenance
fees.
2. Donation system should be established.
3. Revenue from non-studentusersneeds to be generated.
4. Advertisement system for revenue established.
5. Investment fund required.
6. Creative sources of revenue implemented (lotteries, etc)
4. Situational Analysis
Internal Assessment
The Student Zone is a website specifically designed for the convenience of
UTD students. It offers an environment for students to communicate throughout their
college experience. Students are able to chat through forums or post classified ads to
satisfy their needs and wants. Although there are many UTD links associated with
Facebook and Twitter, The Student Zone is its own network created to benefit the
unmet needs and wants of all students.
The website in general is not an innovative concept since there are many
communities already in existence today. However, our core competency is that we

5. 4|Page
have a student customized community. It allows us total freedom of expression and
unlimited potential for growth. Some of our core competencies are:
1. Custom tailored UTD websites; by the students, for the students
2. Would integrate well with current web, digital, and mobile trend
3. Anyone can share/obtain information.
4. Free, no obligation membership.
5. Students are able to expose their talents.
Amongst the listed advantages, if the student market is penetrated and a
significant amount of members are collected, the community will also become selfsustainable. Due to the nature of the website, the students will be free to post/discuss
and add to the website. As a result, the community will run itself as members
contribute to help each other. The administrators will simply need to maintain order
and cleanliness.
Some of our weaknesses include: (1) small budget to work with, (2) gaining
active members, (3) administrating the website to uphold standards of integrity, (4)
web development skill, (5) personnel to manage the website as we cannot yet afford
to pay anyone, (6) web security issues.
External Analysis(Environmental forces)
The Student Zone is similar to Craigslist; simple yet effective. The entire site
is available for both desktop and mobile devices. Since it is a website, someone has to
pay for it. As a group, we have decided that the best way to solve this issue is by
making it a non-profit organization that accepts donations in order to keep the site up
and running. The only competitive forces would be Facebook and Twitter associated
UTD links that share similar qualities of The Student Zone.

6. 5|Page
Craigslist as a competitor is too broad for our UTD community. It also carries
the stigma that it is unsafe and risky to meet people off of Craigslist. Meeting others
from UTD reduces this stigma because users know it is a fellow student in your
community. Facebook also acts as competitor to us; however Facebook is designed to
be an email-style conversation. Facebook cannot consolidate one categorized
discussion. Each topic needs a new, separate page. Furthermore, Facebook cannot be
searched internally for messages/topics, one can only search for pages and people
already in existence. These disadvantages render Facebook extremely inconvenient to
the unmet needs of UTD students. College Confidential and RateMyProfessor.org
also are competitors, but they lack in personalization and don’t have much discussion
about specific classes that each professor teaches.
Our main threat is the student body. If we do not convey the proper message
when marketing this website, it may not catch on with students. Currently, students
figure out one way or another to meet their needs. Our website would make it more
convenient. If not, then we will not be able to maintain membership. Other threats
come from our competition (Facebook, RateMyProfessor.org, College Confidential)
improving upon what they have. If they change their sites to meet the needs that we
are addressing then they may win over the student market since they already have a
significant established share.
5. Market-Product Focus
Market Analysis/ Target Market(What market segments have the best potential?)
The strongest market segment would be current UTD students and alumni.
Segments within the student body include:
1. International Students: segment to their needs and community
2. Transfer Students
3. Prospective Students

7. 6|Page
4. Current Students
5. UTD Alumni
Each segment will have a section on the website. The international student
segment will have a dedicated subset of current student forums.
Product Market Grid
Legend: P= Primary Market, S= Secondary Market
Market
Segment
Classified
Current
Student
P
Forums
Blog
Recent
Graduate
P
Less recent
Alumni
P
P
Prospective
Student
P
S
S
P
S
As the product market grid suggests, for all parts of our website the current
students are our primary concern. Prospective students will tend you use more of the
forums for informational purposes. Recent graduates and alumni will tend to you use
the classifieds and forums section.
Target Market Perception/Position
The UTD Student zone strives to be regarded as the most useful student
community by offering resources as dedicated and relevant to UTD as possible. A
perception map has been created to map us against our competitors based on
dedication to UTD and how useful the source is (refer to external analysis for more
info on competition).

8. 7|Page
6. Market Program
Product Pitch/Strategy
Most college students are active online using sites such as Facebook,
Craigslist and RateMyProfessor.com in order to meet their wants and needs and
obtain information about their school. However, these sites are limited in their
effectiveness due to the overwhelming amount of users and lack of real knowledge of
the campus and its students. What we are introducing is a new social media site,
created specifically to consolidate the best features of popular sites into one for the
UT Dallas student. We love the idea of creating a place where students can come
together to help other students. This is why we operate on the slogan “From one
Comet to another”.

9. 8|Page
Promotion
Because one of the largest issues we have with TheStudentZone.net is a lack
of user ship, we need to make our student body aware of our site. We plan to do this
in a number of ways, mainly through partnering with familiar, established businesses.
We will arrange deals with on-campus restaurants as well as the Pub. An example
would be a 10% off coupon with online registration. We believe that incentives along
these lines will be highly attractive to our target market. Also, we plan to partner with
other companies whose target market consists of college students. Companies like
Jimmy John’s and Off-Campus books are constantly looking for new ways to appeal
to the college market, and we believe that an association with them will lend
legitimacy to our site.
Place
We plan on advertising in local newspapers as well as in the on-campus
newspaper. Also, we plan on posting flyers throughout the campus. More specifically,
we intend to target the following locations: the Student Union, Student Services
Building, Activity Center, Library, and all on-campus housing. This will increase our
number of users by a small amount, but hopefully will spark conversations that allow
our website to grow in popularity. We are also going to post flyers at popular offcampus locations to target our commuting students and recent graduates. Some of
these places include Starbucks and Fuzzy’s Tacos, among other locations. Another
place where we intend to post flyers would be at off-campus apartments such as the
McCallum Apartments.
Finances
Since the website is free to use, we will function in more of a non-profit mode
at first; Relying upon start up investors and donations. Below is a breakdown of costs
and revenue streams combined with projections:

10. 9|Page
1st Year Projection
Costs
5th Year Projection
Web Dev.
$1,200
$200
Moderation
$1,000
$2,500
$160
$20
$6,500
$1,000
$120
$120
$8,980
$3,840
1st Year Projection
5th Year Projection
Domain
Advertising
Security
Total
Revenue
Ads
$100
$8,000
Job Posts
$100
$1,200
Affiliate Mkt.
$0
$10,000
Donations
$0
$500
$200
$30,500
Total
Profits Projected
Revenue
-
Cost
=
Profit
1st Year Projection
$200
$8,980
-$8,780
5th Year Projection
$30,500
$3,840
$26,000

11. 10 | P a g e
Appendix A. Organization and Key Personnel
Organization
The responsibilities to run the website will be distributed amongst our group.
All proceedings will be overseen by the founder of the site including all financials.
All other responsibilities or jobs will be contracted out as necessary.
Founder
Advisor
Moderator
Advertising
Founder: David Golynskiy
Advisor:Elin Britton
Moderator: Ricky Calderon
Head of Advertising: Georgia Gottsacker
Web Developer: Josh Haman
Web
Developer